Posts Tagged ‘gore’

After surviving the visual onslaught of Boxer’s Omen, I expected the notorious Seeding of a Ghost to fulfill the same promises of black magic insanity. On some levels it does live up to my expectations, but on most levels it mainly fails.

While I haven’t been a fan of the Saw series, I was fairly surprised that I actually liked this sequel more than I expected.

New Sequel, Same Torture, Some Twists

The film still looks and feels like a Nine Inch Nails video, but the plot, which draws together some loose ends from the previous three, manages to entertain with its twists and convolutions. In fact, most of the thrills I got from watching this movie was less about the Rube Goldberg traps and devices than the pleasure gained from connecting the dots between the entire series and seeing Donnie Wahlberg again (albeit briefly) as well as other characters from previous installments; it feels like a greatest hits or best of episode.

You gotta love those trashy independent horror films from the 80s — The Toxic Avenger, Re-Animator, and Street Trash (among many more). Films such as these pushed the envelope of taste and humour as they stretched the boundaries of what was allowable on-screen — insane gore effects despite the low budgets, and, more often than not, full frontal nekkid chicks (and a couple of penis shots for fair balance).

You Know It’s the 80s When It’s Neon-Colored

This cult movie, long consigned to the back wall of video stores, finally made its DVD debut a couple of years back in a souped up two-disc “meltdown” edition released by Synapse Films. It tells the story of a community of bums living out of a automobile wrecking yard in Flatbush, Brooklyn, and what happens when a 60 year-old hooch, Viper, hits that community and starts melting bums from the inside out.

This film is absolutely bug-nuts. It’s wall-to-wall craziness like the bastard offspring of Jodorowsky and early Sam Raimi.

But I Look Nothing Like You!

The first thing to catch me off guard when watching this film is that it is a Shaw Brothers film. The same Shaw Brothers that made Saturday afternoons so much fun to stay home and who gave us many excellent kung-fu flicks Shaw Brothers. It seems that in the 80s they turned their attention to the fantasy/horror genre and would occasionally spice things up with, oh, full frontal female nudity.

Much like a Jodorowsky film, Boxer’s Omen is such a grab-bag narrative that you trying to make sense of it all is an exercise in futility. It also treats Buddhism and religious themes rather seriously if in a fantastical manner. Finally, like Jodorowsky, this film is packed with intense visuals many of which are truly memorable.

What I could gather is that the Hung, brother of a boxer whose neck is broken during a match attempts to gain revenge on the Thai mobsters responsible; enter the monk. Yep, his revenge quest takes a major sidetrack when a ghostly monk appears urging Hung to seek him out. Hung ends up traveling to a Buddhist temple where he discovers that he was the twin brother of a mummified monk in a previous life (!). And that’s just a taste of the craziness to come. The mummified monk tasks Hung with defeating the evil sorceror that has prevented him (the monk) from achieving immortality. Hung, of course, doesn’t believe him until he pukes up an eel into his sink.

So for the next half an hour, we are treated to Hung’s training montage as he becomes a monk in order to duel a wacked out sorceror in glam pajamas who commands fake bats that emerge from the skulls of crocodiles. Oh, yeah! And the best part is when the glam magician decapitates himself so his head can attack Hung with its veins! Yeahbuhwha!! The filmmakers must have seen The Thing, it’s eerily reminiscent.

Black Magicians Always Up On Latest Styles

After a psychedelic battle ensues, Hung returns to Hong Kong only to immediately break his Buddhist vows by getting it on with his hot girlfriend, and picking up the boxer/mobster storyline which climaxes in a harrowing fight that is almost ruined by the resurrection of the glam sorceror.

And this is no ordinary resurrection. Three other fashion-victim sorcerors (whose symbols echo the Deadly Venoms (Spider, Centipede and Lizard) — wink wink ) enact the grossest ritual ever committed to film.

First they gut a crocodile (pretty sure it’s fake) and then sew a corpse into its empty gut. Then one guy chomps into chicken entrails covered with squirming maggots and then chases it down with gobs of Durian, that crap-smelling fruit. He then regurgitates it for the next guy to chow down on and add a ripe banana rind to. Who then regurgitates that for the next guy until all three leave a putrid looking mess onto a platter. They then cut the corpse out of the crocodile and wash the worms off to reveal a fully nekkid lady that they then proceed to force feed their masticated dinner. Yowza!

Needless to say, Hung, in a weakened state from breaking his vows, now has to travel to Nepal to retrieve the Golden Ashes in order to save himself and help his mummified twin brother become immortal. It is during this attempt that he has a final confrontation with the lady sorceror and her detachable claw hands.

So yeah, this film has to be seen to be believed, it is beyond out there; and I get the feeling that this film may have been typical for its genre. (The more contemporary Art of the Devil 2 deals with similar supernatural/horror themes so it most certainly is also a cultural thing.) The gore looks cheap and fake, but the ideas are extremely effective and imaginative, and being a supernatural film of the 80s, you can expect a lot of neon colored laser lights.

**1/2 stars for the sheer audacious nature of this film. It’s not great at all, but it is mesmerizing.

So while I still wait for the arrival of Patrick, I will most likely have Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride up next for review.